ITAL 230 Screening the Italian Mafia: Local Impact, Global Effects
This course explores Italian cinematic and televisual representations of one of the most historically salient, culturally complex, and socially corrosive forces threatening not just the rule of law in Italy but also the very fabric of the Italian nation: the mafia. In addition to performing close readings designed to understand the specificity of Italian cinematic and televisual representations of mafia activity in Italy, participants will develop an understanding of how the texts selected for analysis exploit the language of film and television to help viewers 1) become conscious of the underlying power networks animating the leviathan of organized crime in Italy, 2) critically reflect upon and ultimately contest the negative impact of mafia power in the lives of every day Italians, and 3) champion the anti-mafia cause. Participants in this course will also analyze how and why contemporary Italian audiovisual texts increasingly represent how Italian mafias have tapped into transnational organized crime networks in ways that have inevitably transmuted the local impact of mafia power in Italy into an array of global effects.